“Take a chance – it’s the best way to test yourself, have fun and push boundaries.”
Richard Branson
I learn a lot of lessons, daily lessons, from my 4 year old daughter. Children will teach you so much about the world that you’ve forgotten or pulled back from as you’ve turned into an adult.
As she heads off to her first day of kindergarten this week; taking chances, pushing boundaries, and testing herself is exactly what she’ll be doing. She doesn’t think of it that way nor do many adults think of children that way.
Kids are resilient, tough, and headstrong but also caring, kind, and vulnerable along the way. If I were that well rounded of an adult I would be much more successful and able to complete many more task I believe are outside my reach.
Let me put kids and school into context. Picture yourself changing jobs every year, once a year or sometimes more. New managers, coworkers, peers every single year in September. Many adults couldn’t handle that, too much change and adaptation to continue striving forward in a positive frame of mind. Kids do it; they go to new schools, new classes, in rooms with people they don’t know and don’t fully trust, they step outside that comfort zone. It’s not that they do it easily, there are often tears, emotions, and fear but they suck it in and do it nonetheless.
Children push physical boundaries too. Always reaching for that higher bar, to climb that higher structure, to run faster & harder with little regard for safety. Ah fear. That’s what us adults have that children seem to lack. Unable to comprehend fear allows them to not place limits on themselves, allows them to achieve beyond what their little frames can handle, allows them to shoot for the highest mountain. I’m not saying to throw risk, fear, or reasonability out. All I’m saying is recognize the limits you’re placing on yourself and what the child-like version of yourself would think. We can always go higher, harder, take more risk than our minds will allow us to do. Our minds take over and hold our physical self back.
We think of children as being weak, physically maybe, mentally they’re very tough. They don’t need motivational quotes, great speeches, pumping music, or “rarara”’s...they just have it in them naturally, we all do. As adults we push that away. When was the last time you really did something you didn’t think possible or perceived it was well out of reach due to fear? Fear is a terrible disease, it keeps us from living life to our fullest potential and achieving those seemingly far-reaching dreams. It also destroys our resilience, grit, and willpower, all of which we need to really do something special. We aren’t born with fear, we learn it as we grow into adulthood.
When I signed up for the marathon, trained for it, ran it, and achieved it, I had doubts and fears. The ‘what if’s’ come into play, but I had to constantly be reminding myself that the fear in my mind was all fabricated, as it hadn’t happened yet. Fear of stretching that distance, fear of stepping outside the comfort zone for things like yoga, and fear of failure. It was only possible for me to achieve it if I believed I could, worst case I didn’t finish but I wasn’t going to cease to exist. I’d be fine. Just like I tell my daughter when she’s learning to ride a bike, jumping into a bank of snow for the first time, and going off to a new school. Even if I wasn’t there to tell her she’d be fine, she may not fully believe it but she would enter the class anyway or take the jump into the snow.
I couldn’t quit during the marathon, for many reasons, but one big one was her face. She knew I was doing something big but it likely wasn’t that big at all to her, she wouldn’t have understood me not finishing.
The courage children have to step forward often gets missed as we look at them as weak, fragile, often whiny. Spend some time with a child, really thinking about what they’re accomplishing daily. You’ll be amazed at how resilient they are and amazed at how we would likely handle the same situation as adults. Heed the lessons around, they’re everywhere in our world, and use that as a driving force as you fear you’re at your limit.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill
DadBud
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